Tag Archives: Magazine

I just love how everything is now a virtue signaling thing. No matter what you do, you have to find a way to make everything that people like somehow bad. There was this great article in The Onion about how a girl takes a brief break from being a feminist to actually enjoy something. That’s how I feel about every single piece of click-bait crap that is on display these days. If these people could take a break from their latest pet issue, who knows what they would enjoy. Let’s see an example from an article from some teen magazine. I won’t be talking about the article, but rather the images they use to sell their narrative. Because it’s all so stupid.

Okay, let’s break this down. I could go into all of these characters, but I want to focus on just one. But before I get there, let me make a point about the characters shown here. First, they are all heroes. Second, they are known for their disfigurement. Third, their deformity is part of their narrative in an important way. Like how Big Boss (second from top-left, for those who don’t game or pay attention to modern culture in any way) lost an eye because the Boss took it from him. His predominant eye. The goal was to hurt his ability to fight, and it was achieved. Or how Old Snake (top-left) was disfigured stopping Liquid Ocelot’s plan. Or maybe I could get into how Deadpool’s *second from bottom-left) whole arc in the film is that he is grotesque and deformed, but desperately wants to get the woman he loves back. How about Darkman (second from bottom-right)? His whole story is depressing. Underrated superhero movie.

The one that I really want to look at though is the character on the far-right – Auron from Final Fantasy X. Let’s get into the fact that he’s disfigured and really show how featuring him in an article this stupid is fucking ridiculous. There’s a story about why he is so messed-up, and it is equal parts tragic and central to his character. See, Auron went with Braska to fight Sin. In the end, when Braska called the Final Aeon, he used his other Guardian, Jecht. After seeing Braska die, and seeing everything that happened as all for nothing, he chose to go back to Zanarkand and confront Yunalesca about the futility of it. After a very grueling battle, he was defeated. The battle killed him. But instead of simply allowing himself to die, he chose to fight it, and came back as an Unsent. He crawled his way out of Zanarkand and back up Mt. Gagazet, before nearly dying again on the side of the mountain.

Aside form not being able to follow that story if you never played the game, did you catch something about it? Like how Auron was a good man who became disfigured from the cruel injustice of the world. Now one of his arms doesn’t work right and his eye was destroyed. He’s arguably the coolest character in the entire game.

Here’s my point – fucking know what you’re talking about when you use shit like this! Are there a lot of disfigured villains? Sure. But there are also a lot of disfigured heroes whose disfigurement is part of their character. A central part. Like Nice from Baccano, who blasted half her face because of her love of explosives. Tsume in Wolf’s Rain, who has a massive scar on his chest because of a sin he committed. Edward Elric, in Fullmetal Alchemist, who lost an arm and a leg in a horribly-botched alchemy attempt to bring his mother back to life. Just got done watching the first season of Westworld, and you see Ed Harris character go from being an unlikable monster to an almost-sympathetic character, because we learn what got him to where he is and it’s kind of depressing.

This idea that pop culture at large says that only villains are disfigured is laughable. I hate how every little thing is some stupid social justice thing. Like some guy who said that Game of Thrones doesn’t have enough black people. Are you fucking kidding me?! So, a series set in a medieval world, with the largest amount of focus on a very Anglican part of that world doesn’t have enough black people?! No! Really?! You’re putting me on!

For all the legitimate points that are made about pop culture and the flaws in it, we then have to deal with shit like this, and it is insufferable. I hate this crap. But everywhere I look there is more and more of it. Can we please grow the fuck up?!

I am currently working on a longer post about the state of journalism in this country right now. It’s abysmal. Not only do companies have ZERO standards, but you have so much collusion and ass-kissing. It’s not even funny. This infuriates me more than anything, as a person who just graduated from college with a Bachelor’s in Journalism and Public Communication. Journalism in this country is dead beyond all reason. I just did a response to an article that Wil Wheaton composed, like a sonnet, about Anita Sarkeesian. If that article had been more deifying, then Anita would have a heavenly glow around her head. I swear, Wheaton was working so hard to suck her metaphorical cock that he must have some white on his face. Figuratively speaking, of course. Now, to come to the pulpit, there is David Whitford, who has decided to get on his knees and give Brianna Wu the biggest metaphorical blowjob that I have ever seen. He sucks with such dedication! Let’s look at his article in Inc magazine (linked here) and talk about it.

Before we get into this, I’m honestly not going to talk about Brianna Wu. Because this woman is a foul human being. She exploited the death of Amber Lynn Schraw to sell her victimhood. She lied about being driven out of her home by trolls (a video thoroughly debunking that). And most pathetic of all – she trolled herself! From her own Steam page, she posted the question – is Brianna Wu a terrible person? Thankfully, GGers like myself didn’t play ball. The first comment on there was “running out of ammo, Brianna?” Well played. Oh, and she lied about what people were saying about her game, Revolution 60, stating that people considered it a combination of Heavy Rain and Mass Effect. Find me the reviews that said that. Please, do so. Anyone who can listen to that ear-sodomy voice acting and consider it on the same level as Heavy Rain needs their fucking heads examined. So yeah, not gonna go after her. Her history speaks for her. Rather, I’m going to go after the absolutely-appalling “journalism” on display here. Because this writing is so bad that it makes the most unprofessional blogs look good! Don’t believe me? Let’s get started…

Why would anyone want to kill Brianna Wu?

Subtle! Did you all see how subtle that was? I write because this was so unbelievably subtle that you might have missed it.

Wu, 37, is 6 foot 2, slender, and gangly (“I like to think she has a narrow attack profile,” says her husband, Frank). She’s dressed today in black leggings, a miniskirt, and leather boots. Her long brown hair is streaked with pink-red dye, and her bangs keep falling in her eyes. She looks almost like an anime character, or perhaps a superhero straight out of Revolution 60–a shoot-’em-up mobile game, set in outer space, released last summer by Wu’s independent development studio, Giant Spacekat.

Um…dude…this is REALLY creepy. Not gonna lie, this is one of the creepiest paragraphs I’ve ever read. This is like fan-fic levels of creepy. Like you are describing a woman that you are fantasizing about. How did your editor not see this and go – dude, you really need to tone it down. I get that you are one of these beta-male types, who wants women like Brianna to notice you, but when you go this far to make her into something to idolize, it breaks right through that comfortable boundary between professional and unprofessional. For real, you blew past that point without a backwards look. This is not cool.

Wu’s journey has been long, hard, and often lonely. Entrepreneurship has been her salvation, her ticket into a world of her own making, a place where she can live, work, and play, uninhibited and unconstrained. It is precisely that world that the trolls would destroy, if they could. That is what Wu is fighting to defend–not just with words, but through the act of building a business.

You know that thing in journalism called “research.” It’s when you look at various sources to determine if the information that you have is legit or not. It’s the cornerstone of great reporting, because it keeps you from printing blatant lies. Like, some research would show you that Brianna has built her “business” by exploiting a victim complex. Every time that her complex starts to dim, she has to artificially inflate it. She’s a very good student of Anita Sarkeesian, in that regard. She has said that her game gets these glorious reviews, when pretty much all objective sources say that what they have seen of her game is absolutely appalling. Her “ticket into a world of her own making” is actually apt. She has worked long and hard to create a narrative that she is a strong, independent woman, who just happens to need defending. It’s the ultimate con. The reason that her and hers are so very quick to not take interviews from any news outlet that might ask them tough questions. Wow, see what I just did there? I just gave you information that doesn’t just go along with the prevailing narrative. If you were a better journalist, you would have looked into what she said, rather than taking this all at face value.

So why would anyone want to kill her? There is no logical explanation–not one that would make sense to any member in good standing of the human race–but there is a chain of events.

Oh no. You’re not about to do what I think you are. You’re setting up a narrative? Really? Wu’s story is that weak, that you have to set up a narrative for her to make her look like the hero? This is journalism 101, people. If you have to set up a narrative for the person you are interviewing, then it is almost a guarantee that what you are about to say is bullshit. Especially when you have to use such loaded language as “why would anyone want to kill her?” This is so clearly appealing to pathos, and it is journalistic sloth at best. Open bias and complicit collusion at worst. Given how Wu continually is manufacturing things for her to get upset about, the latter option wouldn’t surprise me all that much.

In the moments before the big bang, there may have actually occurred something resembling a rational online debate about conflicts of interest in gamer journalism. Hence the scandal-implying hashtag that has come to encompass this whole mess, Gamergate. Then again, it’s hard to see how Gamergate has ever had anything to do with ethical behavior, given how quickly it devolved into a misogynistic maelstrom.

Statements made without a SINGLE piece of tangible evidence. None. You have the vague “death threats,” “rape threats.” You even join in on this canard that she was driven out of her home. Something that has been proven to be not true (the day after she said that she was driven out of her home, she did an interview with MSNBC, from her office. Guess where her office is – in her home!) Then, because good ol’ Wu has to stay right smack dab in the center of Sarkeesian’s shadow, you bring up Sarkeesian.

Revolution 60 also garnered some glowing gamer-press reviews (“I can’t get enough of this sexy sci-fi spy thriller,” wrote a reviewer on Kotaku, a popular gaming blog, and Paste magazine ranked it fifth on its list of the best indie video games of 2014). Next up: a multi­platform version for desktops and gaming consoles–Giant Spacekat’s only hope of recouping its initial $400,000 investment, earning a profit, and breaking out of the indie ghetto. Toward that end, Revolution 60 recently secured a coveted spot on Steam Greenlight, a powerful online distribution channel for new games. Wu, you see, had a lot on her plate.

The journalistic sloth on display here is staggering. The source for your “glowing gamer-press reviews” is Kotaku? A magazine that has been proven to be in collusion with the likes of Wu and her ilk. People who bend over backwards to make them happy. People who have openly flaunted that they don’t care about objectivity? That’s your source? The journalistic sloth on display here is staggering.

Next – you don’t bother pointing out that EVERYONE who makes it onto Steam Greenlight gets through. For real, it’s so easy to get through the Greenlight process that pretty much any game can do it. Hell, Depression Quest did it, and it’s a stupid text-adventure game! It’s not even a real game at all! Oh, but you make sure that your audience knows that Quinn’s game helps people with Depression. Does journalistic integrity mean anything to you? And that’s the entirety of your article, man! Journalistic sloth. I’m not going after every piece of bad journalism, because there isn’t a single piece of evidence or a single link to any of the EVIL things us GamerGate supporters have done. Because that would be real work, which I am certain you’ve never had to do.

I will say that it’s interesting that you have that episode of Law and Order: Stupid Voters Unit as a positive for her, since she came out publicly saying that that episode made a mockery of what she went through. Did she change her narrative and say that that’s a good thing, or did your half-assed “research” just put it there. Naturally, you selling that that intellectually-bankrupt piece of fiction represents anything real about GamerGate shows even more how pathetic you are.

Wu is not a superhero. She can’t fight every battle. But right here, right now, she’s all in. “I could not live with myself if I sat this one out,” she says–as much as it interferes with everything else: making more cool games, building a successful company, transforming an industry. All she really wants is to get down to business.

No, she’s not a superhero, everybody. But if you read this article and take it at face value, then Wu and everyone like her are Jesus and need to be raised on a pedestal. This is what journalism has become in this country. It’s dick-sucking! For real, Wu, I hope you paid this boy well. He so clearly gave you the metaphorical sucking of your life that I think he deserves a little something for his effort. He’s a good boy!

Whitford, this is pathetic. I can’t believe that a publication that wants to be taken seriously can put out this one-sided propaganda and call it journalism. I am so ashamed of the industry I have become a part of. This is what it’s become. It’s become “journalists” giving figurative BJs to people who are clearly paying for the publicity, and getting figurative jizz all over their face. Get cleaned up, Whitford. I think that Quinn needs a quickie.

Until next time, a quote,

“As I said, each can offer opinions in a multitude of forms, but it’s what backs those opinions that makes them so different. I’m talking about truth. About fact. The concept of honesty and the principle of integrity. A journalist is sworn to these things. A critic is not. And it is upon that point that the difference lies. A critic has no oath, other than to their own opinion and viewpoint. They’re not bound by a social contract to be unbiased or fair. They answer to nothing other than their own conscience.” -Internet Aristocrat, Game Journalism, The Decline of the 5th Estate (Part 1)

After extensive investigation by the police, to which an article in The New York Times stated that the girl who levied the accusation, “Jackie,” was not cooperative with the police, it has been discovered that there is no substantial evidence that any of what she said in her Rolling Stone article happened. After all their work, the police have found that everything that “Jackie” said was false. While that doesn’t prove that she was not the victim of rape, it does prove that her entire story was fabricated, and now we are having to actually look with cold eyes at what happened. I mean to lay out what this means and what should happen next. Because what happened here is such a farce and displays so much of the bitter truths about universities and how they and society at large looks at cases like Jackie’s.

First, the girl herself, Jackie, should be taken in and charged with levying a false accusation. I know that sounds harsh, but with all the insanity, along with this girl’s refusal to cooperate with law enforcement, she should face legal repercussions. This girl has done so much damage to the cause of prosecuting actual rape, because now the culture is going to be even more critical. Though maybe that’s for the best, in some ways. After all, look at how many Puritan Feminists came out and claimed that they stand with Jackie, regardless of how there was no evidence. It’s time that this girl discovered that your actions have consequences. This critical nature that people are gaining may be for the best, because the last thing we need are more cases like Jackie’s. Although, the police haven’t technically closed the case, even though there is no evidence. And the only witness they have, Jakie, has absolutely zero credibility at this point.

Next, the reporter who wrote that article for Rolling Stone should be fired. This should have happened ages ago. She displayed everything wrong with modern journalism, by taking a story from a single source and not doing even the bare minimum of fact-checking. She started a media shit-storm that she defended, even as the truth was coming to light from The Washington Post. This person is a terrible journalist. She should be fired and, to be honest, her career should be totally destroyed. Her credibility has been. What publication will hire a person who fabricates their story?

Also, Phi Kappa Psi fraternity should sue Rolling Stone for their part in all this. It was their terrible reporting and destroyed their reputation and got them black-listed in their own university. If they are able to bounce back from this, it will be surprising. Now the publication that tarred and feathered them should be held to the fire and be taken for everything they are worth.

Then there are the university Star Chambers that we are seeing on colleges. Universities are expelling and suspending students for crimes like rape and sexual harassment, without going through any due process. With the former of these, that’s just insane. If you believe that a crime has occurred, then you have a legal OBLIGATION to go to the police. Young men are having their academic futures destroyed without even getting the right to defend themselves. Already, young men who have suffered this are coming back with legal teams and universities are losing money. As they rightly should. When you have a system of justice that assumes guilt and doesn’t follow due process, then you have broken the law and you should be held liable. I hope these colleges lose a ton of money. That’s at least a small way to get some satisfaction against a system that treats men like we are the enemy.

But lastly, and most important – this should serve as a lesson to people. We live in a society where people believe in a mythical “rape culture.” One that I have seen absolutely zero evidence that exists. This idea that all over our society are things that promote rape is beyond absurd. We gamers have been the most recent target of that. Endless reports of people being sent death and rape threats, by trolls on the Internet who are just doing it for the lulz, and because the people who report these threats are professional victims who feed them to keep the money flowing in. The reaction to what happened at UVA highlights everything that’s wrong with modern feminism. There was even a Tweet where someone said that “‘evidence’ is an invention of cis males. It has no place in the real world.” A statement so insane that destructive that it goes to show the thinking of Puritan Feminists.

They don’t care about evidence. They don’t care about reason. They will take things on faith and buy it without a second thought. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I ditched religion a long time ago! This kind of neo-Victorian fear of sex by third-wave feminists is destroying all the work that the sexual liberation movement fought so hard for. It’s so blatantly obvious that they are afraid of sex. And when you have them being supported by the culture at large, with the police not being willing to put away a person whose accusation was now proven to have no substance of any kind in jail, what do you think is going to happen next? Why, justice will continue to not be served! These Social Justice Warriors don’t care about actual justice. They don’t care about real rape victims.

I have seen some of the most insane statements from these people. One woman claimed to need feminism because of “stare rape.” Another woman said that “birth rape” is a real thing. These people are basically making any form of intimacy where the man didn’t ask for permission each and every step of the way into rape. Is that the world that you all want to live in? Because I don’t! Third-wave feminists are exposing just how ugly the modern views of sex are.

So yeah, the story is done, and now some justice needs to be served. Since I know that the entire world reads what I have to say and will totally go out and do my suggestions *read sarcasm*, I look forward to what happens next.

Until next time, a quote,

“Do not spread false reports. Do not help a guilty person by being a malicious witness.” -Exodus 23:1

I haven’t really delved into my thoughts on the whole issue with the article the Rolling Stone wrote about the University of Virgina story about a young woman who claims that she was gang-raped. Following that story, The Washington Post did some investigating and (in some amazing journalism) found that the Rolling Stone article was filled with inconsistencies and flat-out lies and was even written with the understanding that the true story was not being told. This was something the reporter agreed to, with the stated reason being, “they wouldn’t invite me to another frat party.” Yeah, because that doesn’t sound scripted at all.

Needless to say, the woman who wrote this article’s career as a journalist is forever in ruins. She has no one to blame but herself. Supporters of the article absolutely mobbed the man who wrote the Washington Post article that took this piece of journalistic sloth to the woodshed. There was hate and vitriol abound toward a person whose crime was getting the truth out.

Given my virulent problems with modern third-wave, Puritan feminism, you’d think that I would be all over this. But I didn’t really have an angle that a thousand people and their brothers weren’t already talking about. I want to look at this another way. See, in another article about this story, it seems that the story that the alleged victim told Rolling Stone and the one that she told her friends were different. It seems that she told her friends that it was five guys instead of seven. And instead of mounting her on broken glass, she told them that they forced her to blow them. Also, she says that her friends told her not to tell anyone in the Rolling Stone article, with that whole, “they wouldn’t invite me to another frat party” line. However, according to the friends, they told her to call the police. The holes in this story are unraveling, which is making it look more and more like all of this was made up.

This has given me my area of conversation about this topic. Because, you see, I don’t know what actually happened that night. Nobody does, it seems. Only her and whoever the victims are. They weren’t even talked to in the Rolling Stone article. The article states that they were asked several times. According to the accused, they were never contacted. The only source on the story was the alleged victim. More and more, the plot is coming apart, in what is looking like an elaborate lie. Toward what end? No idea. Most likely, most or all of what really happened that night will never come to light.

Now I have my angle. I don’t know if this young woman was raped or not. However, regardless of the truth, it doesn’t matter. Here’s why – she’ll never be able to convince a jury. By taking her story to the press, instead of to the cops, and then subsequently lying to them, the lawyers of these five or seven or however-many guys will take any story she paints in court and shred it to pieces. No true justice will ever happen, because her lies caught up with her. Should a police investigation ever take place, it will never amount to anything, because they are in the same boat. It’s he-said/she-said, and the things being said are all over the place. All we know for certain is that she lied about what happened to Rolling Stone and justice is forever lost.

This has bearing on the whole “social justice” angle. For the first time in a long time, it is looking like social justice warriors can lie. Their lies can be big, and they can be damning. For so long, it has been – if you make an accusation, it’s out there. It can ruin reputations, marriages and livelihoods of people. But now, a door has been opened. One that can never be closed again. The door is – people lie. People make things up to suit their needs. All it took was for someone to make a lie so big that it was unsustainable to bring a house of cards down on top of them, which this has. This young woman has now cast doubt on future accusations of rape. Future victims are now going to be scrutinized, because the concept of playing these stories out in the media is getting ugly. I guess nobody involved with this truly thought about it. Either that or they didn’t really care. Regardless, the story is the same.

I recently read an article about a new study that says that the whole 1 in 5 women in college are victims of rape is bunk (linked here). Now, let me be clear – all rape is horrible. Accusations of rape should get a thorough and FAIR investigation. That said, when you have SJWs who are screaming about how women need to be constantly afraid and trying to make universities have inquisitions of people who are accused with faulty evidence, what do you think is going to happen? There is an article that shows just how bad it has gotten (linked here). False accusations are damaging to the cause of actual justice. For starters, the SJW inquisitions are nowhere near good enough. This is coming back on universities in the form of lawsuits against them. It’s costing colleges money. It’s also costing victims trust. So many lies and inconsistencies. So much debate and uncertainty. Future victims are now going to be greeted with distrust, because of the mania surrounding this topic.

On the Twitter page of Christina Sommers, The Factual Feminist, I saw a woman saying that even false accusations of rape are good. Are you kidding me?! In what way? This attitude is going to bring down so much unpleasantness on the SJW crowd. All it takes is one incident to start a fire. Look at GamerGate. This could be the thing that does it. Trying people accused of rape in the public is wrong, and the consequences will reach far beyond this one article.

To the young lady who decided to lie and the reporter who accepted this with journalistic sloth, I hope you are both happy. You have started something, and let me assure you – it isn’t something good.

Until next time, a quote,

“You’ve been taking every advantage of your position you could. You’ve been cutting corners. You’ve been lazy. You’ve been living on image and every third word out of your mouth is a lie. Now you’re feeling sorry for yourself. You think the system is wrong. But you know what, Meredith? The system didn’t screw you. The system revealed you and dumped you out. Because when you get right down to it, you’re completely full of shit.” – Tom Sanders, Disclosure

Something that most people know about me is that I HATE listening to arguments about how video games cause violence. It is a tired an old argument that nobody who has even a modicum of knowledge about video games knows that that isn’t true. It is just like how feminists like Anita Sarkeesian try and shame men for playing video games. Or how those who like to cosplay are made fun of. Shaming based on what you like is as old as time itself, and now I have seen an article by Slate Magazine where they make the argument that adults who read books for young adults and children should be ashamed of themselves. Here is a link to the article, now let’s take it apart piece-by-piece.

These are the books that could plausibly be said to be replacing literary fiction in the lives of their adult readers. And that’s a shame.

How? First – how are young adult books replacing “literary fiction”? What do you define as “literary fiction?” For real, Ruth, I want very rigid structure for this term, along with a description to how various youth fiction cannot fit in to it. It’s ironic that you use books like “The Fault in Our Stars” and “Eleanor and Park.” These are books that, and we will agree on something here, aren’t particularly thematic and strong. They are simple stories that are made to make their audiences feel good.

I don’t know if you’ve heard of a series called “His Dark Materials.” A VERY sub-standard movie was made from the first in the series “The Golden Compass.” It was a series that was making a point about corruption within the Catholic Church, with a strong theme to protestantism. It was like an allegory to the end of religion’s place in society. Is the fact that it involves younger protagonists somehow lesser in literary scope? Or maybe you’ve heard about the series “Animorphs.” A series about a war between a group of young people and an alien race that is slowly taking over humanity. A cold and brutal series about the loss of innocence and the cold reality of having to grow up too fast. By your criteria, how does that not fall into the category of “literary fiction?” What separates these things?

Adult fans of these books declare confidently that YA is more sophisticated than ever. This kind of thing is hard to quantify, though I will say that my own life as a YA reader way back in the early 1990s was hardly wanting for either satisfaction or sophistication.

I’m not following your argument. If you believe that these books are satisfying and sophisticated, then what is your issue? I’m really dying to see, because it comes back to the same idea as people who get on people for still liking Disney movies. Both arguments sound very familiar. Yet, if you ask any film critic, you will hear them still talking fondly about how these movies talked to both kids and adults.

Great fiction does the EXACT same thing! It speaks to people of all ages, and we digest it individually. Are you really going to sit there and make the argument that people who read these books for reasons all their own is wrong because you don’t see things the same way? Where do you get off judging people by that criteria?!

If I’m being honest, it also left me saying “Oh, brother” out loud more than once. Does this make me heartless? Or does it make me a grown-up? This is, after all, a book that features a devastatingly handsome teen boy who says things like “I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things” to his girlfriend, whom he then tenderly deflowers on a European vacation he arranged.

You asked “does it make ma a grown-up?”, which leads me to wonder – how do you define a grown-up? If you say “people who read adult books,” I’ll kick you in the taint. Does becoming a grown-up automatically mean that you are not into cheesy romantic dialogue? Tell me, and do be honest – you NEVER watch romantic comedies, right? I mean, if you look at some of that dialogue, and the dialogue in the film “The Notebook,” how can you say that this is any worse? What separates the cheesy BS dialogue in adult fiction from the BS dialogue in young adult fiction? You remark how people read it for escapist purposes – what exactly do you think that people read “The Notebook” for? Insight into the human condition?!

But the very ways that YA is pleasurable are at odds with the way that adult fiction is pleasurable. There’s of course no shame in writing about teenagers; think Shakespeare or the Brontë sisters or Megan Abbott. But crucially, YA books present the teenage perspective in a fundamentally uncritical way.

Are you kidding me?! How you ever read books like “His Dark Materials?” Have you ever read the “Pendragon” series? Have you read the “Uglies” series? The “Uglies” series in-particular is very critical of the teenage perspective. Each book was a reference to a different identity problem with teenagers. “Uglies” was a book about self-esteem problems. “Beauties” was about the desire to be beautiful and cutting to deal with stress and to feel.

Your problem, from where I’m sitting is this – you do not have enough exposure to young adult fiction. In other worse – you are writing from an ignorant position. You read the books that are popular, particularly to teenage girls, and you decide to make a case about how everyone should think based on that. All you do is look at simple fiction, deciding to judge things at face value.

Fellow grown-ups, at the risk of sounding snobbish and joyless and old, we are better than this. I know, I know: Live and let read. Far be it from me to disrupt the “everyone should just read/watch/listen to whatever they like” ethos of our era. There’s room for pleasure, escapism, juicy plots, and satisfying endings on the shelves of the serious reader. And if people are reading Eleanor & Park instead of watching Nashville or reading detective novels, so be it, I suppose. But if they are substituting maudlin teen dramas for the complexity of great adult literature, then they are missing something.

Nashville? Really?! That’s your example of what people should be watching? Not “Game of Thrones” or “Breaking Bad?” Not anything that actually challenges conventions? Given the popularity of “Game of Thrones,” I would think that you would be on that.

If you are going to make the argument that us adults are better than fiction we like, then the simple reality is this – you are another one of these faux-academic critics who believes that you have some enlightened point of view that allows you to shame a crowd of people who you don’t agree with. That’s kind of pathetic.

Until next time, a quote,

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” -Oscar Wilde

I’ve talked at length about the new professional victim feminists who are inhabiting Tumblr and Twitter. Since none of them seem to go out into the real world especially much (because that would involve being around men, who we all know are rape-supporting misogynists, right?), the Internet is all they have going for them. As we have seen with the Nightline story about the “Block Bot” (you out there, Oolon?) and the fact that the EA is consulting the fake-gamer Anita Sarkeesian about the Mirror’s Edge sequel, there are all-too-many groups who are willing to kowtow to these people. One such is the magazine, Salon.

In response to the ridiculous BS that followed with the episode of Suey Park and The Colbert Report and the #CancelColbert trend, the brilliant comedian Patton Oswalt decided to do a little test on Twitter. He released a bunch of Tweets apologizing for things that he never said. He was deliberately trolling the “social justice” feminist types who get so easily offended and choose to make their opinions very vocal. When they don’t have something real to get outraged by, they are more than happy to paint a picture of the very worst about someone in their minds. Which is precisely what happened with Patton Oswalt. Since there were no real Tweets that he was apologizing for, and they were outraged over nothing, they decided to weave their outrage out of whole cloth.

Since Oswalt made good sport of the easily-butthurt and reactionary social justice, it was only a matter of time until Salon magazine got on the butthurt gravy-train. A writer named Miles Klees decided that he was going to go on in a REALLY long post about how he was unfollowing Oswalt and why the rest of us are too. Apparently, making fun of the reactionary social-justice idiots by trolling their insecurities is a step too far for Klees. And Salon magazine supports him!

We live in an interesting age of media. Good journalism that focuses not on bringing us “both sides” of a story, but lots of sides with various players is forfeit, replaced with talking heads who know that nobody who they have to care about is going to rebuff them of their bullshit. They have insanely-exaggerated headlines that they know will get people’s attention. These headlines have one purpose – click-bait. See, journalism is eschewed so that the publication can get more revenue. Because good journalism has no place in today’s society. After all, why talk about something important when we can talk about how Patton Oswalt isn’t in favor of ending the “rape culture” of comedy that they believe exists. Talking about real stuff would just be too hard. That would require real research!

Salon is no better. For real, this entire sad episode just shows how pathetic this publication is. What is journalism in this country coming to? Is this all that we can talk about? Do these people have fuck-all ethical integrity? What is the cost of one’s dignity nowadays? If one can measure click and ad revenue, then we could probably figure it out. What’s more, it is don’t nothing but harm for the future of news in this country. This is unacceptable! This type of pandering just makes the stereotype bigger that the people of this country are stupid and only capable of caring about the most meaningless things in life. Oswalt trolled them for the intended purpose of getting them to get angry at nothing, to prove a point about how these people don’t care about the truth. You validated this belief by making yourself out to be the moral high-ground of a joke.

The state of journalism in this country is kind of insane. It’s all just boiled down to who can get the most clicks. Click-bait is everything. Every single news outlet does it. The reason is simple – because there is money to be made. All of these groups are nothing but corporate scum who only care about the money. They will sell their dignity to whoever is willing to buy it, at dollars per click. After all, what’s the point if there is no money in it?

The news used to be a public service. They used to report on what they believed was important for the public to know. Now, it’s a rogue’s gallery of who can whore themselves out faster. Salon magazine is no exception. This whole pathetic episode with Patton Oswalt has proven this. I hope that someone there feels at least a little bit ashamed.